Heretofore, various dough and bread mixtures have been a preferred bait for catching fish by conventional methods. Bread, alone, is an outstanding bait; however, it is fragile and lacks tensile strength. This is because ordinary bread is composed of soluble as well as non soluble substances. A non soluble substance in bread is the gluten, a tough albuminous protein that gives bread dough cohesiveness and the ability to retain gas when leavened.
It is my invention to fortify the gluten with ultra fine plastic monofilaments while still preserving the characteristics of the gluten to produce a bait which looks, acts, smells, and feels the same as ordinary bread, but is practically impervious to dissolution in water unless masticated.
The importance of baits containing matters or substances which effuse readily in water is grossly overstated within the art of fishing. Fish, contrary to humans, do not operate in a gaseous environment and therefore do not have an olfactive sense readily understandable by humans. Fish must rely on detecting substances carried by water molecules and in this regard have little difficulty in operating in threshold levels of 10.sup.-9 molecular concentrations. As a matter of fact, it has been proven that some fish can actually detect one molecule among 10.sup.15 molecules. Fish then, do not detect the presence of substances by a smell sense similar to humans but can actually differentiate between such different chemicals as amino acids, proteins, peptides, sugars and specific compounds within these, all of which may be found in bread.
It is my invention to chemically tag plastic monofilaments in a bread crumb so that these appear to be a natural part of the bread as far as the fish are concerned.
This is possible because plastics are not solids as commonly thought. Plastic filaments, as used in this invention, are actually macro-molecular chains through which water molecules, among other, pass with relative ease. I have found that the albuminous protein chains in flour, called gluten, in contrast to carbohydrates, attach readily to plastic polymers such as the example of polyester monofilaments used in this invention. In doing so the physical properties of either substance are not altered but the gluten and the filaments work together synergistically to provide a very tough bait as disclosed hereafter.
Fish do not feed by taste alone, but also by form, color, shape and texture of potential food. I have observed that fish will often carefully mouth a bait several times, inhaling and expelling it, before swallowing same. Ordinary bread, impaled on a hook, quickly succumbs to such mouthing. The bait, as invented, is so resistant to this mouthing that several fish have actually been caught on the same piece of bait used successively.
Normally, the presence of a different substance within a known food would cause the defense mechanism of the fish to become alert. This invention circumvents this defense mechanism by chemically tagging, as explained above, and also by using ultra fine monofilament as small as 6-15 denier in size. The preferred size filament appears to be about one third the diameter of a human hair when viewed under a microscope.
I found these properties in a material which is new in commerce. Technically it is called interfacing or insulation. It consists of a resilient, non woven, long staple, multifilament polyester web which lofts to about 550 cubic inches to the ounce. It may be found readily in the commerce in rolls stated to be 3, 5, or 8 ounces to the square yard. Excellent results have been achieved with all.
It would be thought that plastics would melt at ordinary baking temperatures; however, I found that the plastic filaments merely soften and generally follow the structure of the gluten when it is leavened, and hence settles in the pattern of the bread crumb. This is perfect because it is an object of this invention to create a bait to resemble bread as faithfully as possible.
I have found that by virtue of the gluten and the resilient plastic monofilaments of the web acting synergistically, the invented bait contains gas bubbles, as cavities, just as ordinary bread. These trapped gas bubbles make the bait buoyant and when fresh it will float even when containing a hook. It is my invention that my bait can be floated, or, because of its resiliency when squeezed lightly under water to release part of the gas trapped in the bait, it can be made to suspend or sink in the water. This feature is a unique, invented function of my bait which cannot be duplicated by ordinary bread or doughballs and which will be recognized as very useful by experienced anglers because it reduces requirements for floats and sinkers and provides for a natural presentation.
Ordinary bread will stale and mildew even when adding mold retardants such as calcium proprionate. For this reason I prefer to dry my bait until most of the water, not molecularly held, has evaporated. By doing so I have increased the shelf life of my bait to more than a year.
Human handling of bait often imparts to this an amino acid, L-Serine, which has been proven distasteful to fish. For this reason a masking scent, or lure, may be added to my bait such as cumin oil, anise, garlic or herring oil and extracts. Such scents may also be added by any user.
When my bait is dried as described above, it may be reconstituted to bread consistency by briefly dunking in water. Ordinarily a piece of dried bait will reconstitute within 1 to 3 minutes.
My bait may also be dyed using common vegetable dyes. I found that by coloring the leavening solution, the dyes penetrated best the gluten and the web, and thus provided uniform coloring which did not leach into the water or stain the hands of the user.
To make my bait, as an example, I employ the following: